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Create a Kafka Pipeline Link

  • Capella Columnar
  • how-to
March 30, 2025
+ 12
To continuously update a Capella Columnar collection with a data stream from a Kafka pipeline, you create a remote link.

After you create a remote link, you must create one or more collections to receive the data.

Requirements

Your Columnar account must have either the Project Owner or Project Manager role to be able to create a link and its associated collection. In addition, you must also have the necessary credentials to read data from the Kafka topic or topics you want to stream into Capella Columnar.

To connect to a Kafka data streaming service, you provide the broker URL or URLs and the authentication type to use with its credentials. For data that’s in a format other than JSON, you also provide the schema registry to use and its details.

Capella Columnar supports Confluent Cloud Kafka and Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) as Kafka sources:

  • Broker URL or a comma-separated list of URLs.

  • Authentication Type and its credentials:

    • API Key

    • API Key Secret

    • TLS 1.2 or higher encryption

  • Schema Registry Details for data in non-JSON format:

To create a link to a Kafka pipeline:

  1. In the Capella UI, select the Columnar tab.

  2. Click a cluster name. The workbench opens.

  3. Use the explorer to review the existing databases, scopes, and collections. If you want to set up a database and scope to organize data received from this new source, you can do that now. See Manage Databases and Manage Scopes.

  4. Select Create  Data Link. The Create Link for <cluster name> Cluster dialog opens.

  5. Select either Confluent Cloud/Platform or Amazon MSK.

  6. Review the list of prerequisites that appear after select the data source to make sure you have all the necessary information and have configured your Kafka source. Then click Continue

  7. In the Link Name field, enter a name for the link.

    The name must start with a letter (A-Z, a-z) and contain only upper- and lowercase letters, numbers (0-9), and underscore (_) or dash (-) characters.

  8. Supply the Broker URL or a comma-separated list of URLs.

  9. Select an Authentication Type and then supply the credentials. See the requirements for Confluent Cloud Kafka or Amazon MSK.

  10. TLS encryption is optional for some authentication types. To leave data unencrypted, clear TLS Enabled.

  11. If the data is in a format other than JSON, supply Schema Registry Details.

  12. Click Save & Continue. Capella Columnar creates the link and adds it to the Links section of the explorer. The next step is to create a collection to receive the data. Click Create Linked Collection to begin creating the collection, or click Complete Later to start the next step later. See Create a Kafka Pipeline Collection.

See Also